Task #23--Took Survey, but had to go back and really read some of the blogs to vote for my favorite. Hope it wins. Whew! Done. Crossed the finish line ahead of the deadline. Some of my favorite tasks? The music download and photo editing were probably the most fun, but the web design was also probably the most valuable task I took on with Webolution. There is so much that will be useful long after the Webolution project ends.

Task #22 - Polish your shoes with a banana! Now I really had to go check out that one. And then I found how to cook bacon with less mess in a waffle iron. Who'd a thunk! So, because I'm so focused on the NaNoWriMo novel writing effort, I have been checking their blog daily http://blog.nanowrimo.org/ and check in with crazy people trying to write a 50,000-word novel in a month as well as the NaNoWriMo staff. I'm so far behind--I haven't even got a day's worth of words (6,000+) and I should have 25,000!

Task #21 - Picnik is EASY. Not nearly as many steps as other photo editing software I have used. I just used one of the demo pictures since I am doing this task from my work computer and don't have pictures on this computer.

Task #20 - Mesa County gov't site is familiar because quite a few reference questions have sent me to this website. Besides the Assessor's page, I looked at the Planning Department/Code Enforcement/Citizen's Complaint form because this might be useful info in the future. Also looked at Elected Officials to see who are the current sitting members of the Board of Commissioners and to see when their terms expire. Also looked at the Public Hearing webcast section and the types of recorded documents available online. Lots and lots of information. State of Colorado site is even bigger by comparison, but one of the frequently asked questions has to do with vehicle registration. A close second are questions about drivers license renewal and reinstatement. I get those a lot on Ask Colorado. The Colorado state website is very complete in these areas, and I've always found them helpful. It won't be long before we'll be into another income tax season, and I've been able to get the state tax forms right off the website. Just by chance to also clicked on the sex offender map for my address in Palisade and found nothing. As for the other govt sites, I've used the Copyright an Patent Trademark Office and the IRS site many times. They are easy to use, and offer forms for patron information. I've never seen Ben's Guide to the Government, so decided to look around on that website. The graphics are terrific, and in fact the whole site would be used with adult reference questions if all they wanted were some basic answers and such information as a copy of the Declaration of Independence or the Bill of Rights. It's always great for somethe as complex as "how laws are made." I'll have to remember this--in fact I'll bookmark it as a favorite.

Task #19--Ooops, missed one for 90%.

Task #18 -- When you need a long URL, you can't find one, but I figured the government would have them! Found http://yellowpages.washingtonpost.co/united+states+government+national+park+service.327671.84027935.home.html and used Tiny URL to make it much much smaller. Very interesting.

As for Zamar, yes, this is something that is fun to do and extremely simple. Only 4 steps but don't know if I'd use it on a regular basis. Seemed to take a while to get the pictures I used for this project to get to my e-mail.

Task #17 - Just checked out CLiC and Infopeople. I am familiar with CLiC because I think they do a fantastic job of online tutorials and regional workshops. I just wanted to see what is going on for the near future, and found out that they have a workshop scheduled for Grand Junction March 1-2, 2010, so I made a note to register closer to the date. I am also familiar with Webjunction, and even have a log-in set up, but decided to try one of the other sites listed that I don't know about, and found Infopeople to be truly great. I am going back to check out their archived webinar offerings. I found a great one on weeding and another one on collection development that might be helpful. Glad to know about some sites I hadn't heard of.

Task #16 - Open source software completely conforms to our philosophy that a library should make information available at no cost. Having trouble downloading, which seems terribly easy. But it wouldn't open. I'll check back on this.**11/3/09--OK just took awhile to download. I created a text document and tried the different features, like spell check, font change, formatting. I like the features unique to Open Office like formulas. I also tried templates (similar to Publisher), and spreadsheets. Great to know about this alternate resource.

Task #15 - This does seem more efficient than copying a link because you can be very specific, highlight only certain paragraphs, but it's also great to get graphics. I signed up for a clipmarks account and installed on Foxfire then clipped a paragraph from Clipmarks and e-mailed it to myself. I'll have to try it more.

Task #14 - Prefer my audio books portable so I can take disks to my car. I don't like to use a listening device in the car. However, I see definite benefits to downloading to a listening device so i can listen while walking. I tried NetLibrary and downloaded a mystery by Peter Robinson called Aftermath. It will be fun to listen to it on my computer. Plenty of FAQs on both NetLibrary and OverDrive to anticipate patron questions.

Task #13--Soundsnap is probably one of the sites I will find the least use for. Strictly for the techies. As for application to library use, hmm. Dunno. However, I think the downloadable commercial music websites are fantastic, especially ccMixter that allows remixing. If I were a musician, I'd be on these websites all the time. In a previous task (#2), I selected Pandora for music to listen to but heard from coworkers that Last FM was better, so decided to try it. Looks like Last FM has a lot more to offer in the way of songs as well as information about artists. I surfed through for quite awhile becoming totally engrossed in all there was to investigate.

Task #12 -- NoveList has changed a bit since I started working at the library six years ago. The addition of NoveList Plus is fantastic. Found the series search a welcome addition to the KDL "What's Next?" Seems like it wasn't so long ago that the reference desk people had to use an out-of-date expensive 3-ring binder called Series to find books in series. Now we have some help. Tried the Author Read-alikes, and as predicted there just aren't enough authors listed to include the very one I wanted to look up. I selected Peter Robinson, and got no results. I think the next step, to look under Recommended Reads, would produce a better result. At least you could pinpoint whether you are looking for "adventure," "fantasy," "humor," "nature writing," etc. i checked out Tour NoveList too, and came across several things I wasn't familiar with, but one of the best features is "describe a plot." Boy, does this come in handy with patrons who can't remember details.

Task #11--I did step #2 first--looked up a different author in Biography Resources Center, a more contemporary writer, Peter Robinson who is Canadian and writes fabulous British procedurals with a series character Inspector Alan Banks, sort of a maverick and a thorn in the side of his superiors. I was astounded that the first one was written in 1987. I didn't think I'd been reading his novels that long! Robinson is extremely well educated with a graduate degree and has earned many awards and honors for his novels. I also found a complete list of his novels--I'll have to check and see if I missed any--and also have his official website. Great stuff. The Book Report Network -- checked out the bookreport.com link. Very similar to ShelfAwareness, another book/author daily news type website. Found out about a new author R.J. Ellory who has published seven novels in Britain, but is just being released in this country. His novels look like very good mainstream fiction. Also like the poll--would you travel across country to a literary festival to see your favorite author--and the question of the week. Absolutely many great features here which would keep one bibliophile occupied for many hours, like the podcast about a panel of book club facilitators. Funny stuff.

Task #9--Easy Web Design is something I'd like to take a look at later on. I see all kinds of applications. But for now, I decided to go to Weebly's homepage just to scope out the features. It looks so simple--drag content, preview various designs, customize your look, and best of all, hosting is free.

Task #10--Took the Ebsco basic search tutorial--didn't learn anything new since I've been doing these types of searches at the reference desk for about six years. However, there are some features I don't use often (such as saving articles to a folder) but which would really be helpful to a patron doing a lengthy search. So it's good to be reminded of what Ebsco has. I used MasterFile Premier to search for a Consumer Reports article on laptops. My search resulted in something as recent as August 2009, but it was about netbooks. The next most recent article was published in June 2009--in fact it was their cover story and was quite extensive. I really am shopping for a laptop and hope to buy one before the end of the year, so the information in the article, the ratings, the comparisons, all the good things CR does, was perfect for my purposes. When I've used Masterfile Premier with patrons, they are astounded they can walk away with a full text article. Many try to go on CR website with no luck, so what we offer is so much better. Biography Resource Center isn't a database I use too often at the reference desk, but it is absolutely straightforward. I searched for Willa Cather since she was the subject of my master's thesis, so out of curiosity, I wanted to know what would show up--9 citations. I especially liked the citation which gave an in-depth profile of the Cather's life and noteworthy contributions to American history, so it wasn't just biographical information but her contribution as well. I also appreciated the fact that the number of words (1,550 words) was given as well. I can judge whether the article will be substantial enough for my purposes if I were writing a paper. Another citation was an in-depth profile of Cather's contributions to young adult literature at 4,839 words. This too would be useful information, limited to YA literature, in some instances.

Task #8 - Creative Commons is a fantastic resource. The US has the toughest copyright laws in the world--thank goodness. However, images, info, music that can be shared are useful to students just beginning to learn their way around the universe. I've had questions on Ask Colorado as broad as "I need to know about the pyramids." An image they can use for a report plus just the basic info about pyramids is enough to get a student started. For my own personal reasons, I like to use images to make cards and collages. A stock photo of autumn foliage, for example, is just what I'm looking for because I plan to alter, cut, paste over, and change anyway.

I checked out Case Studies and found Artabase, a social networking site for artists, galleries and art lovers, dedicated to the promotion and archiving of artistic exhibitions and events. It operates out of Australia with an online presence since 2007. This creative database is available for use by art historians, journalists and collectors underscoring the site as enabling a collective definition of history. Another one was Orchestration, a dance-theater performance with hundreds of background projections, created as a student project at New York University. Using photos from Flickr available under various CC licenses, the creator was able to do so without having to license hundreds of images or incorporate them into the work illegally.

So this is great to know that all kinds of creative resources is several media.

Task #7 - The best reader websites for me would be Shelfari and LitLovers. Shelfari seems very simple to use, not a lot of clutter. However, I signed up for LitLovers, and the main reason is their offerings of self-directed lit courses. What fun. I'm all for rereading classics, or even reading them for the first time. I'm an English major, undergraduate and graduate, and I still haven't read all the classics, especially so-called modern ones, that I want to. 1000 books to read before you die? I'm only on about number 100! So LitLovers is the one for me. I think I could spend months and months checking out their courses, so a year from now, you'd still find me actively using LitLovers.

Checked out the Boulder PL Good Reads, and thought it was quite good. However, I'm not a bestseller reader, so would hope more people would be chiming in about that odd little fiction book they found tucked away in the stacks. I'd be the one contributing that kind of fiction. I'd like to see MCPLD get something similar, and I would definitely volunteer to be a contributor.

Task #6 - Really impressed with the Ohio Library Council's website. User friendly enhanced by the pleasing graphics. Important information in the middle with tables to the left, photo to the right. Headings make for easy browsing. Their mission statement was short and sweet--"Serve the community"--the the four requirements in bullet points. When I think about our own library mission statement, I can't help but think we really can't enhance the quality of life for some people just through library service. That's a big order. Definitely liked the way they explained call numbers and classification for people. We get people all the time looking for fiction but they say, "it doesn't have a call number so I won't know where to look." And tech services vs. public services is very well explained. Oh, and the quiz at the end. That's great. I think we could take some tips from this for our website. The Houston Area library Service training module was altogether different, but again, the graphics enhance learning about the library so much. What a pleasure to use--just three easy choices to get you started.

Task #5 - I haven't used the "book bag" to make my requests in the past, because I usually have only one at a time, but this feature is really great for those occasions when patrons come up with their lists. I'll definitely use it more, and of course will point this out to the patrons who like to make their own requests from home. It's also easy from the staff point of view to place holds in Millennium because you can open up a patron record and just chug away with adding holds.

Task #4 - I wasn't going to create a Facebook account, but figured oh what the heck. It wasn't but a few hours that three friends from California hooked up, and one even wrote a message to which I replied pronto. Now that I've got it, it's going to be interesting to see who else finds me. I never did get to the list of Facebook accounts that we could chose from.

Task #3--Well, oops. Got 86.6% need to slow down and not take the test so fast, but it was interesting to see how much information is packed into our web site.

Whooshing right along to Task #2. This is great. I don't have to rely on the scratchy radio reception to get music I like. I chose Pandora, and it's fun to play around and see what pops up. Picking "genre stations" resulted in some interesting music!

Task #1 was fantastic,fun. Can't wait to do the other tasks.